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Lily Allen: Chippy off the old block

Lily Allen is queen of MySpace - with as much attitude as her dad, Keith

On an it-takes-one-to-know-one basis, I'd say the new British singer Lily Allen is a classic middle child. So she's grown up feeling, fairly or unfairly, that she was sort of left to get on with it - and as a result, her inner world is as highly developed as her self-absorption is total. Doubtless her siblings would take issue with her version of events (they always do). But for Allen, how she experienced her early years as a serial expellee from several schools, and her frustration at not being able to press fast-forward and become an adult immediately, has not so much informed what she is now as sculpted every last detail.

And what she is now is a young person, just days away from her 21st birthday, who is having to get used to the idea that those years of self-absorption are suddenly bearing fruit, in the shape of a